How Many 'Alters' Per 'Organism'?

[AshvinP]

BK, as far as I can see, assumes there is one alter per organism (in contrast to someone like Nietzsche for whom the body 'is a social structure composed of many souls')

I don't believe that is an assumption BK makes. Specifically, in reference to Chapter 2 of his new book on Jung, who was very much in the Nietzschean metaphysical tradition, BK outlines how the human 'organism' could be thought of as an ego-consciousness surrounded by 'islands' of 'luminosities' i.e. volitional sub-personalities who are not directly accessible to the ego but 'impinge' on it and can be inferred through their effects, i.e. dreams, visions, neuroses, etc. And, in a recent interview, BK stated that he does not disagree with Jung about anything.

[Eugene I]

Also, multiple alters even in the areas accessible to ego's consciousness in cases of human DID.

[Soul_of_Shu]

I'll suggest that for every individuated psyche, there are countless simultaneous expressions both corporeal and transcorporeal, existing in multitudinous dimensions, at all levels of development, transcending the sequential progressive experience imposed by this spatiotemporal construct. In theory at least, one can shift focus and find one's locus of awareness has shifted into some other such expression and/or realm, with this realm fading like some ephemeral dream. Indeed, this is what awaits everyone.

[AtaraxJim]

This is actually something that I'm a little unclear on.

If life is the image of dissociation, then presumably every one of our cells is itself a dissociated alter. But then how does the one and the many work inside the human organism? I mean, I appear to occupy the perspective of the whole person, but do my neurons also have perspectives as fully dissociated alters? And if so, how come I don't know them? And how does my willing affect their willing? Does my willing cause determine what they must do (as would seem to be necessary if my will is efficacious). Or is my apparent willing just an epiphenomenon of their actions considered as a collection?

[AshvinP]

This is actually something that I'm a little unclear on.

If life is the image of dissociation, then presumably every one of our cells is itself a dissociated alter. But then how does the one and the many work inside the human organism? I mean, I appear to occupy the perspective of the whole person, but do my neurons also have perspectives as fully dissociated alters? And if so, how come I don't know them? And how does my willing affect their willing? Does my willing cause determine what they must do (as would seem to be necessary if my will is efficacious). Or is my apparent willing just an epiphenomenon of their actions considered as a collection?

Jung used the word 'unconscious' primarily to signify a realm that escapes introspective access. Reasonable people could disagree about the extent to which that is true, but we certainly cannot make 1:1 correspondences between physicalist concepts like cells and neurons and these sub-personalities. That being said, we can infer their existence from the continuous experience of 'conflicting' motivations, emotions and thoughts. Much of the time we are being-in-the-world with very little self-reflection, but as soon as we start introspecting we get a sense of how that conflict is real and how there are hierarchies of willful beings within us. Our inveterate habits of mind can indicate what willful being is where in those hierarchies. Under idealism, none of it can be consistently described as 'epiphenomenal'.

[Eugene I]

If life is the image of dissociation, then presumably every one of our cells is itself a dissociated alter. But then how does the one and the many work inside the human organism? I mean, I appear to occupy the perspective of the whole person, but do my neurons also have perspectives as fully dissociated alters? And if so, how come I don't know them? And how does my willing affect their willing? Does my willing cause determine what they must do (as would seem to be necessary if my will is efficacious). Or is my apparent willing just an epiphenomenon of their actions considered as a collection?

In the BK's scheme life is not an image of dissociation. The world/life that we perceive is the image of MAL ideations across dissociation boundaries. Some of the "characters" or elements in this image of the world may correspond to the actual alters, and other elements may not. The people or animals that we perceive do correspond to actual alters. And, according to BK's hypothesis, actually all metabolizing organisms also do, but this is only a hypothesis. The cells in his scheme do not correspond to any alters, they are just perceptions/images that we perceive across the dissociation boundary as the results of MAL ideations. This BK's hypothesis that only metabolizing multi-cell organisms represent alters was criticized by some opponents as being arbitrary, unsupported and ad hoc. As opposed to the BK's version of idealism, panpsychism assumes that even elementary particles are individuated subjects of conscious experience.

The problem you described is called subject combination/decombination problem and it is indeed a serious problem that many versions of idealism and panpsychism face. BK avoids it by assuming that there is only one alter per a living organism, and so, the neurons in your brain are not alters. You are right that any scheme that assumes that there are alters/subjects that are subsumed by higher-hierarchy alters/subjects would run into the subject combination/decombination problem.

[JustinG]

FYI, this topic was also extensively discussed in the old forum, where I think the consensus was that BK posits one alter per organism. Here is the link to that discussion:
https://groups.google.com/g/metaphysica ... zLZg5iCQAJ

This discussion from the old forum re cell consciousness might also be of relevance:
https://groups.google.com/g/metaphysica ... v6pg_5CQAJ

[AshvinP]

FYI, this topic was also extensively discussed in the old forum, where I think the consensus was that BK posits one alter per organism. Here is the link to that discussion:
https://groups.google.com/g/metaphysica ... zLZg5iCQAJ

This discussion from the old forum re cell consciousness might also be of relevance:
https://groups.google.com/g/metaphysica ... v6pg_5CQAJ

I will quote here a tiny snippet from Chapter 2 of BK's new book.

The implications of this view are profound. Jung is basically arguing that, in addition to non re-represented, autonomous and cognitive isolated phenomenality, the unconscious may also comprise a veritable population of somewhat conscious agencies distinct from the ego, each with its own experiential contents. And since unconscious activity can impinge on ego-consciousness, these agencies can presumably communicate with the ego, as it were, through e.g. dreams and visions. Indeed, in Jung's view the psyche may be an ecosystem of communicating conscious agencies, in which ego-consciousness is merely one of the participants.

[Eugene I]

The implications of this view are profound. Jung is basically arguing that, in addition to non re-represented, autonomous and cognitive isolated phenomenality, the unconscious may also comprise a veritable population of somewhat conscious agencies distinct from the ego, each with its own experiential contents. And since unconscious activity can impinge on ego-consciousness, these agencies can presumably communicate with the ego, as it were, through e.g. dreams and visions. Indeed, in Jung's view the psyche may be an ecosystem of communicating conscious agencies, in which ego-consciousness is merely one of the participants.

Here BK seems to pose that the "somewhat" conscious agencies residing in the unconscious can communicate and interact with our ego-consciousness, but are not subsumed by it, meaning that their subjective perspective and experiences are not included into our subjective perspective and experience. In this way the subject combination problem is avoided.

[AshvinP]

The implications of this view are profound. Jung is basically arguing that, in addition to non re-represented, autonomous and cognitive isolated phenomenality, the unconscious may also comprise a veritable population of somewhat conscious agencies distinct from the ego, each with its own experiential contents. And since unconscious activity can impinge on ego-consciousness, these agencies can presumably communicate with the ego, as it were, through e.g. dreams and visions. Indeed, in Jung's view the psyche may be an ecosystem of communicating conscious agencies, in which ego-consciousness is merely one of the participants.

Here BK seems to pose that the "somewhat" conscious agencies residing in the unconscious can communicate and interact with our ego-consciousness, but are not subsumed by it, meaning that their subjective perspective and experiences are not included into our subjective perspective and experience. In this way the subject combination problem is avoided.

I can accept that formulation, but the perspectives and experiences are within the 'boundaries' of a single 'organism'. The organism cannot be reduced only to its ego-consciousness.